Miami Elections

From their wheelchairs, Gloria and Cipriano Alvarez testified that not only had they never cast an absentee ballot for Miami Mayor Xavier Suarez, they had never voted in the United States at all. Furthermore, said the octogenarian Cuban immigrants, they didn't even live in the city of Miami. "If I had to vote," added Cipriano Alvarez, "I would like to vote for Mr. Carollo."

More than 700 people from around the nation rallied Monday outside Miami-Dade County's election department to protest what the NAACP has charged was widespread denial of voting rights to minorities on election day. "We have come to the melting pot of America, the place of palm trees and dishonesty," said Kweisi Mfume, president of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. "We are standing before the building they chose not to count the vote in to say: 'We will not be counted out.'

Where Democrats saw an unruly Republican mob that last week scuttled Miami-Dade County's manual recount, election supervisor David Leahy said Saturday he saw "a noisy, peaceful protest." "I was not intimidated by that protest," Leahy told The Times in a telephone interview. "I saw it for what it was."

Where Democrats saw an unruly Republican mob that last week scuttled Miami-Dade County's manual recount, election supervisor David Leahy said Saturday he saw "a noisy, peaceful protest." "I was not intimidated by that protest," Leahy told The Times in a telephone interview. "I saw it for what it was."

More than 700 people from around the nation rallied Monday outside Miami-Dade County's election department to protest what the NAACP has charged was widespread denial of voting rights to minorities on election day. "We have come to the melting pot of America, the place of palm trees and dishonesty," said Kweisi Mfume, president of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. "We are standing before the building they chose not to count the vote in to say: 'We will not be counted out.'

With nearly 2 million people casting votes before Tuesday's election in Florida, Democrats and Republicans are accusing each other of preparing to cheat their way to victory on Tuesday. Democrats charged that President Bush's campaign was preparing to target heavily black precincts across the state for challenges by posting an inordinate number of lawyers in each location. Republicans worried aloud that thousands of absentee ballots, which tend to favor the GOP, have been lost.

President Obama has won reelection. The Republican Party faces a reckoning about its identity. In Florida, however, the election goes on. The state whose dysfunctional voting methods traumatized the nation 12 years ago is still up in the air. The state was supposed to have been a major presidential battleground, but the morning after election day, it was still a question mark. Instead of butterfly ballots and hanging chads, the problem appears to have been caused by a long ballot, high turnout and some mechanical failures.

November 5, 2012 | By Joseph Tanfani, This post has been corrected, as indicated below.

TAMPA, Fla. -- In Florida's Interstate 4 corridor, the vote-rich band that often sways elections in this important swing state, voters were lining up on Monday to pick up absentee ballots. With all the wrangling over access to the polls this year, some said they weren't taking any chances. “It made you all the more determined to go out and do your voting,” said Lee Stephens of Tampa, an Obama supporter standing in a quick-moving line at the Hillsborough County supervisor of elections office.

Even if the Florida Supreme Court gives Al Gore everything he is seeking, he might not pick up enough votes from recounted ballots to overtake George W. Bush and become the next president, according to statistical analyses by The Times and independent scholars. Despite claims from some Democrats that a hand recount in Miami-Dade County would put Vice President Gore over the top, projections by statisticians and The Times suggest that might not be the case.

November 5, 2012 | By Mitchell Landsberg and Joseph Tanfani, Los Angeles Times

There was the actual storm. Then there is the metaphorical perfect storm. With polls showing a close presidential race, fears have risen that the integrity of Tuesday's presidential election could be thrown into doubt by either damage from super storm Sandy, which has created enormous voting challenges in New York and New Jersey, or the confluence of ballot box disputes in battleground states. Armies of lawyers were at the ready Monday as tussles continued over voting, especially in Ohio and Florida, the two states considered most likely to throw the presidential election into an overtime ballot dispute reminiscent of the Bush-Gore race of 2000.

From their wheelchairs, Gloria and Cipriano Alvarez testified that not only had they never cast an absentee ballot for Miami Mayor Xavier Suarez, they had never voted in the United States at all. Furthermore, said the octogenarian Cuban immigrants, they didn't even live in the city of Miami. "If I had to vote," added Cipriano Alvarez, "I would like to vote for Mr. Carollo."

Theresa LePore was up all night, sifting the numbers precinct by precinct well after sunrise Wednesday. She was searching for anomalies, aides said, and preparing to defend the new ballot she had designed to make voting easier for the county's large elderly population. But nothing could have prepared LePore, Palm Beach County's supervisor of elections, for the firestorm that would overtake this county seat.